Future.Bible Meet-Ups Across America | Episode 23

For today’s episode of the Future.Bible Podcast, Kenny Jahng and Dj Chuang will share their schedules and meet ups across America. They will provide the dates of the conferences they will attend and for their meetups.

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Details mentioned:

• BibleTech Conference in Seattle, April 11-12
• youtube.com/user/THEMICHAELJRSHOW

TRANSCRIPTION:

Kenny Jahng: Welcome to the Future.Bible Podcast. My name is Kenny Jahng and I’m really pleasantly here with Dj Chuang, my friend in Orange. Little known facts, Dj always has Orange. I wonder if you have any non Orange apparel, Dj.

Dj Chuang: I actually do have some non Orange apparel, but had never been seen with it. For my cover operations.

Kenny Jahng: At what point did you turn into Agent Orange? What year? It certainly was not from childhood.

Dj Chuang: No, it wasn’t from childhood. They didn’t have things in the Orange back in my childhood. Still find it very hard to find Orange things, but when I find them I get them. It started in 2007 when I moved from DC to OC and I happen to be wearing Orange during that trip and happen to be wearing Orange at a conference and the light bulb came on. Orange is a great association for my geography. It’s great for networking because there’s, I can just say, I’m the Asian guy in Orange and people can spot me across the room or even across the state fair ground. My wife and son did that once and then it’s the secondary color of my Alma Mater, so I graduated from Virginia Tech, which is Maroon and Orange.

Kenny Jahng: So your brand compliant as an alumni?

Dj Chuang: Yes. So it’s all aligned. Brand aligned.

Kenny Jahng: That’s fantastic. Now Orange happens to be my childhood favorite color also, it evokes just happiness, right. It’s just, it’s a good color to have. I don’t have as much Orange apparel as you. One of my kids, one of my daughter, my daughter plays for a Dutch field hockey team, a club team and their color is Orange. So I have accrued a significant amount of Orange, including a little known facts in competitive sports or field hockey for high schooll, most of the people convene for Thanksgiving, for a big festival competition. And so you basically have Thanksgiving dinner with your teammates in hotels for like five or six years until your kid graduates and because of that you want to dress up and so fathers of the team have started to get Orange blazers and Orange suits. I haven’t gotten that far yet, Dj, but I will. If I was, you know, I’m sure you probably would have invested in an Orange suit for Thanksgiving already.

Dj Chuang: But I found one that fit yet. Now that you mentioned thanksgiving, can you think of two holidays within two months of each other? Orange colored Halloween and Thanksgiving. Isn’t that awesome? Orange?

Kenny Jahng: Orange. Well, one of the things why we’re talking about Orange and why you wear Orange in conferences is because recently we’ve been out in about two different conferences over the last year for American Bible Society representing the .Bible internet registry. And one of the things that people always say, “Oh, I wish we knew you’re in town. If I knew I could have met you, met up with you guys or we could have made some plans.” And we’ve had some successful meetups. You know, I remember last year in Dallas in Reed Tower, we were able to do actually two nights in a row of meetups with friends that have met us there. NRB last year we had a great meetup. I know that that church conference last year, we had a great meetup as well. And so we love putting the word out I guess on social media, but someone suggested, “hey, you guys should actually just talk about your travel schedule for the next couple months.” And so here we are. We’re basically trying to share Dj’s clothing schedule when he will be wearing Orange out and about in the multistate of the USA and that we’re going to be here together. So the first one was we just came back from Las Vegas and we had a great time in Las Vegas. Dj why don’t you just recap just very quickly why we were in Vegas again in 2019.

Dj Chuang: Yes. So we’re in Las Vegas a third week of January or last week and it was a domain industry conference where people that buy and sell domain names personally organizationally to help brands reach their audiences. And we were there as a registry because we’re part of that ecosystem and we share best practices and develop good relationships so that we know how to work together.

Kenny Jahng: You know, what was encouraging to me, it wasn’t that big and last year we were there too and this year as well, but we helped cosponsored hosts co host a breakfast for Christian industry professionals there in the domain industry and there was a bunch of them and so we had a great time there. So that’s one of the things that we look forward to. Next year we’re going to be in Austin, apparently for names con. So Austin watch out in 2020 in the first of the year. We should be in your neck of the woods. Next is February. We’re going to be actually in DC not for a conference, but for a team meeting. But Dj, I would say that if anyone wants to reach out to us and meet up, we could figure out a way to potentially meet for coffee or breakfast. We always meet for breakfast before meetings are nice and early at a, what is the name of the spot that we go to all the time. That’s our hang out now.

Dj Chuang: Oh, Silver Diner. It’s a local franchise with organic foods, delicious foods and soft booth seats. And even little jukebox at each table.

Kenny Jahng: I love the jukebox. I got to remember, bring my coins next time. I love that jukebox. But it’s a classic diner, right? With the, it feels like the fun is going to come out of the kitchen at any point. So yes, in DC we’ll be there February the week of February 25th if you are around, please let us know so that we can meet up for coffee or breakfast or something. And then in March, what are we going to be doing in March, Dj?

Dj Chuang: March is the National Religious Broadcasters conference here in Anaheim, California. And usually it’s been in the Nashville area, 76 year old conference. The history of radio broadcast television broadcast and now they’re spilling over into the Internet and the digital world. And we’re participating in more than just having an exhibit booth. Kenny, you’re actually an integral part of the one day session called the digital media summit. So tell us how that’s going.

Kenny Jahng: Yes. So the conference has evolved. It’s really interesting that the history of the conference, the name of the conference is “Proclaim”, right? Proclaim is the name of the conference, NRB is the organization behind it. It started with religious liberty and freedom over the radio and that all these organizations came together because they want to protect religious freedom. It’s almost gone full circle to 2019 days our culture and society today, but regardless, that has proliferated. It’s been a great conference for industry professionals. One of the days they usually set aside for digital media and it’s called the digital media summit. It’s a one day, like what do you call it, like a super conference or micro conference, a summit. And so, it is the last day of the conference this year, the Friday, March the 29th. And I’ve had the honor of being asked to help emcee that day, which is going to be fantastic.

Kenny Jahng: I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun and the speakers that we’ve gotten for this year, Carl Bliss who’s the chairman of the committee, has done a fantastic job with the community to curate speakers that I think are top notch. And so one of the things that I’m looking forward to doing is I think on this podcast we’re going to invite all the speakers to come join us for a quick conversation and share their outlook on the world, what’s happening in their neck of the woods and what they’re excited about for NRB and the digital media summit this year, Dj. I think it’s going to be, right? You’re looking forward to some of those conversations.

Dj Chuang: Yes, very much so. And we have someone for Facebook coming. Nona Jones, yes. A bunch of other names that are on your screen, not mine. I’m just here joining you on this podcast and I’m so grateful it’s in my home state, in my, within driving distance of home so I can sleep in my own bed.

Kenny Jahng: Actually, it’s like one or two blocks south of Disney this year, right? If I recall the neighborhood, right?

Dj Chuang: Yes, that’s right. Just across the street from the Anaheim Convention Center.

Kenny Jahng: So that should be a fun time there. I remember the first time going out to Disney World or Disneyland? I always get confused.

Dj Chuang: Disneyland.

Kenny Jahng: How do you set the two street Disney world versus Disneyland?

Dj Chuang: Disneyland is first, started in California and then Disney World is the one in Orlando and I don’t know what to call the other ones around the world.

Kenny Jahng: So the one in California was established first?

Dj Chuang: Right. Walked on those grounds.

Kenny Jahng: I always thought that Florida was the home of the origin of the Disney attractions. Well I learned something new today. So we will be in that area March 26, 27, 28, 29 that week or so. So if you’re in the area, plenty of time to figure out how to meet up with you. And last year we had an informal meetup that we cosponsored with the .Church conference guys. We’ll try to figure out if we can do something semiformal again this year. But if you’re in the area, West Coast, this is a great time to meet up with us. And then April we’re back on the roads at the beginning of the month. I’m excited for this. This was going on for a couple of years that I knew about. I never had a chance to get out to the Pacific Northwest as they call it. But we’re going to head out to Bellingham. Tell us about that, Dj.

Dj Chuang: Almost Bellingham. Bellingham is the home of Faith Life which is the new name for the software Logos Bible software. And they host an occasional conference, kind of like it intermittent white at first it doesn’t happen every year. That happens every few years and 2019 April 11, 12. They’re hosting a two day conference called Bible Tech. So people are talking about Bible and Technology conference itself will be hosted at a place called Cedarbrook Lodge, which is like 10 minutes from Seattle airport. So very convenient for those of you coming from out of town. And the many tech people right there in the Seattle area can come together and talk about Bible Tech.

Kenny Jahng: That’s great. And then Bob Pritchett is the president, founder of Faith Life and we interviewed him on episode 18. So if you want to look it up, episode 18, Bob Pritchett of Faith Life. Very astute guy. He shared some of the vision on the ever evolving industry of Bible study and the technologies that are available. That was a very interesting conversation. I’m looking forward to meeting him and the team in person, Dj, right?

Dj Chuang: Yes. It’s gonna be a great time. If it’s Future.Bible, you know?

Kenny Jahng: Yes. What I love about that episode, episode 18 is he actually answered the question, is it lagos or logos software. We spilled the beans. You’ll have to go listen to episode 18. But he did come on record and share with us what the answer to that question was. Right. So marching ahead. What else do we have after that conference in April?

Dj Chuang: So immediately the next week, April 16 to 18, we’ll be in Dallas for the Outcomes Conference, which is hosted and sponsored and organized by Christian Leadership Alliance and they love to share best practices about the business of doing ministry and Christian nonprofits.

Kenny Jahng: I’m looking forward to that and seeing what has happened last year at CLA outcomes. They use that as the occasion to launch or relaunch their platform called Leadership.Bible. And it’s a learning platform and I think they’ve invested a lot of energy and resources behind it for their, I think CLA has over 3000 nonprofit members now to today to their organization.

Dj Chuang: Yes. That sounds right. They have a membership thing and they have a whole network of subscribers on their email list and they provide a lot of free content with it teaching videos and articles to help nonprofits of any size to do their work more effectively.

Kenny Jahng: Right. And so some of the headliners there I think is going to be interesting to hear from. They always are able to pull some, I think quite, you know, veterans of the industry per se. So I’m looking to Michael Oh, who’s slated to speak there, head of Lausanne organization. So from a global perspective, seeing what is happening in terms of movement dynamics and Gospel Evangelism I think is really interesting. Is there any other speakers that you have an eye on for CLA this year, you know that’s coming?

Dj Chuang: Sorry, I go for the people that are attending, usually not the headliners, so I’m kind of an odd bird there.

Kenny Jahng: Relationships. Yes. And the one thing that was um, last year, we were able to invite and successfully have join us one of the speakers. Why don’t you share a little bit about that from last year?

Dj Chuang: Yes. So last year we had a special breakfast gathering with pastor Derwin Gray who used to be a linebacker with the Carolina Panthers and now he is a pastor of a fast growing church, multiethnic church there outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. And he spent an hour with us and really gave us some powerful, encouragement word for what we’re doing with Bible technology. And actually this year I just saw, I just looked at the website, [inaudible] is one of the speakers, so he always has a thoughtful perspective about how we live out our faith without getting caught up in technology and culture. So I look forward to meeting him.

Kenny Jahng: Yes. I’ve never actually heard him in person, but always interesting stuff coming from him. And then the other guy that’s headlining also is Jimmy, right? Jimmy who used to be, I think with the Willow Creek Association, but now is heading up Compassion, Compassion international. Jimmy Mellado, right?

Dj Chuang: Yes, that’s right. Another reason I want to meet Sky, he’s a veteran podcaster. Yes. So we’ll have to see if we can get him on Future.Bible too.

Kenny Jahng: That would be fantastic. If we had that opportunity. We should reach out to them there. And then again, we’re going to probably have, we are actually having a meetup there formally. So if you’re in the Dallas area and free that week, please reach out to us and we’ll get some details of the meetup event that we are actually hosting during that conference. And I think that’s gonna be a fun one. So please reach out to us if you’re in the Dallas area, you don’t even need to be going to the conference. It’s better if you are at the conference so we can spend more time with you, but if you’re not even at the conference and you can join us for a little bit. Definitely. This is your call to action. Reach out to one of us directly. Now after CLA Outcomes. We are not done yet. We are continuing to March for toward the end of spring May. Where’s that? The middle of spring. End of spring. May. I’m excited because we’re going to go back to Dallas again. It’s kind of like a round trip for the Pushpay summit. I don’t know. Have you been to a Pushpay summit before?

Dj Chuang: I’ve only dropped in as in roamed around the outside. Never sat in a session, but, no. I have sat in this session and it is really high octane. Leadership kind of stuff. So it’s a room where executive pastors and very strategic kind of churches can trade there kind of secret sauces. Very powerful stuff.

Kenny Jahng: Yes. We have speakers there, like, I’m going to butcher her name, Cheryl Bachelor, but I forgot her how to pronounce it. But she’s going to be talking about with the dare to serve type of approach in business. She’s is or was the CEO of Pier One, which is, I believe the number one furniture store in America. And so she’s got a lot of interesting background. She’s also a CEO of the company that owns Popeyes chicken, Popeyes chicken and then she was also part of the KFC organization even before that. So, tons of leadership experience. I love seeing a woman on the platform as well. And then there’s other guys like Patrick Lencioni who’s going to be there. Carrie Newhoff who seems to be everywhere today. I feel like he is, there’s probably a clone of Carrie Newhoff going around or maybe it’s a Hologram at every single conference this year. It seems like Carrie Newhoff is everywhere recently. But it will be good to hear from him in person again. So we will be at the Pushpay conference. This year, I think it’s going to be different. I’m last two years, three years. It’s been a smaller. They are planning to have, I think over 1500 people at the conference this year. Dj. That’s a pretty big Christian conference for leadership leadership, right?

Dj Chuang: Yeah. I think in the past they’ve aimed for a smaller intimate crowd of 300 and 500, so for them to go large and big and they have the big venue, Gateway church and uh, my hope is they’ll have a special guest named Michael Jr., Taped one of his comedy specials there at Gateway Church. So that would be the bonus and I’m praying for it.

Kenny Jahng: Do you like Michael Jr.’s comedy? I think he’s great. I think is a ultra calls are great actually, that he actually integrates into his gigs once in a while. But not everyone knows who Michael Jr is, I guess. But I believe he is on Netflix, right?

Dj Chuang: He’s on Netflix. Actually, the whole one hour special is on Youtube. That’s why I remember watching it and it was at Gateway because I recognize that sanctuary, say what it was, but it was actually a Sunday sermon where he described how comedy is giving people the opportunity to laugh something from people. It’s giving something and that fits so well with what Pushpay is about. Giving people the joy of generosity.

Kenny Jahng: Yes. You know what, I now I, I think I’ve watched that Youtube video. It was, yes, it was a at a church and he was giving the message in that. Yes, I think we’ve seen the same video together. If you haven’t watched it, it’s a good one to look up, Michael Jr, the comedian Christian comedian. Yes, we’ll see if he’s going to be at that conference or not. He may not be. It’s not listed, but he was at Gateway.

Dj Chuang: Well, we’re gonna add a link in the show notes. Make it easier for our listeners and viewers to watch that video if they haven’t seen Michael Jr. He’s hilarious. Clean Christian comedy and you will laugh.

Kenny Jahng: Yes, definitely will be inspired as well. Yes. Well I can tell you any of our meetups with our friends, our quotes, internet friends or friends from IRL that we get to actually meet up with at these conferences and events as we traveled the country. We ended up laughing and having a good time as well. Right, Dj?

Dj Chuang: Yes. We have a lot of laughs and a lot of food. And a lot of fun.

Kenny Jahng: So this is the call to action we are sharing with you our current schedule. And the whole point is that we’re going almost coast to coast. We’re going to be in different cities this spring. We have more on the roster for the second half of the year. But even this next coming couple of months, we’d love to meet in person and learn more about your organization, what you’re doing with your venture, with your team, with your campaigns, with your ministry, and also dream together as to how we might figure out to use .Bible and put that in your toolbox. Because we firmly believe that if you are a Bible inspired organization, that there probably is some way to use this to your benefit to strengthen your brands, to have brands clarity to congregate or an aggregate more people on the internet with instant association with your mission that cuts through the clutter.

Kenny Jahng: And so, that’s one of the things that we’re passionate about as we traveled the country. We would again love to meet up with you guys and I’ve got this fun meter that Dj and I have that whenever we meet one, we actually neither goes the full tilt from minimum to maximum. Like to carry the fun meter around with us. And we’d love to do that in person with you this season. So DJ, why don’t you let people know the best way to get in touch with us and also how to get a hold of the rest of the podcast episodes because the podcast Future.Bible is not just about you and me chitchatting, although we love to do this and share some of the things that are on our mind and things that we’re seeing. But we do have a lot of other guests that are interviewed on this show.

Dj Chuang: Yes, Future.Bible is the name of the podcast and it’s the name of the website, www.future.bible. And there we have an archive of all the past episodes with different guests that are thinking and doing creative things about Bible and technology and we want to share those insights as well as inspiration for how we can engage, help people engage with the Bible in the 21st century and the transcripts are there. It’s very searchable. Subscribe button is there so you can have these new episodes convenient delivered to you wherever it is that you listened to podcasts and certainly connect with us on social media, Twitter, Facebook, so that as things come up as we travel, you have a direct feed on our next locations where we can meet you face to face.

Kenny Jahng: And then as we close up Dj, we want to make it almost profitable for people to not just meet us in person but also have a distance. Why don’t you share with us the contest giveaway. The giveaway that we have going on in terms of Bible reading for churches that anyone listening today has the ability to pull out your phone and put in the URL and participate right now and you’ll get a chance to win something pretty cool.

Dj Chuang: Great. So if you’re listening ASAP, before March 15th, go to www.get.Bible/reading and we are collecting and aggregating all the churches and faith communities and even small groups that are reading the Bible together in whatever way you’re doing that and share the URL of how you’re doing that. And then we’ll put all those into a hat and actually a digital hat. Pull out a winner, give you a $100 gift card and all the video archives of the faith leads tech conference, hosted at Lifeway last November and we’ll also feature all your, all the entries so that you can see and be inspired by other churches are as long along with your church, how you’re reading the Bible together to continue on this journey. Because it’s actually it’s the best way, best predictor of spiritual maturity just reading the Bible, and so it’s the best thing you can do to get your people strengthened in their Christian faith and walk.

Kenny Jahng: Awesome. Yes. We’re trying to build this resource to inspire and share what your peers are doing. We’d love for you to be involved if you have a reading program or if you’re thinking about pulling together reading program, please put the details into that contest giveaway form and we’ll be able to publish that and share with other church leaders. So you’re doing a service to other ministries, but you’ll also have a chance to win $100 Amazon gift card and then we’re giving away digital passes so it will be free. You don’t have to pay, you can actually go to faithleads.tech and sign up and pay for the entire digital archive of all the speakers that was at the conference of very inspiring talks, a lot of innovation that was shared there. But we’re going to give away a digital pass to a winner as well that you can share with your church teams.

Kenny Jahng: I love to say organize a Lunch and Learn with your teams and watch a couple of those talks, be inspired, open up the creativity of your ministry teams and volunteers and have some conversations about what we can do together with the Bible, with ministry and the Kingdom.

Kenny Jahng: So, and that’s the purpose of this podcast. Dj. Thank you so much for joining me today and being on the road together, you know, you are one of those guys that are putting up with me on a regular basis as we travel together from city to city, conference to conference, events to events , and we’d love for you guys to chime in and let us know what else you want to hear about on Future.Bible here on the pockets. Reach out, let us know and we’d love to meet you in person as we traveled the country.

Kenny Jahng: I’m Kenny Jang signing off for Future.Bible, Dj Chuang on the West Coast. I’m on the East Coast and we’d love to meet you somewhere in the middle. Take care. We’ll catch you here next time on the Future.Bible podcast.

HIGHLIGHTS:

04:19 we’re in Las Vegas a third week of January or last week and it was a domain industry conference where people that buy and sell domain names personally organizationally to help brands reach their audiences. And we were there as a registry because we’re part of that ecosystem and we share best practices and develop good relationships so that we know how to work together.

06:20 March is the National Religious Broadcasters conference here in Anaheim, California. And usually it’s been in the Nashville area, 76 year old conference. The history of radio broadcast television broadcast and now they’re spilling over into the Internet and the digital world. And we’re participating in more than just having an exhibit booth. Kenny, you’re actually an integral part of the one day session called the digital media summit.

10:12 And then April we’re back on the roads at the beginning of the month. I’m excited for this. This was going on for a couple of years that I knew about. I never had a chance to get out to the Pacific Northwest as they call it. But we’re going to head out to Bellingham. Tell us about that, Dj.

Almost Bellingham. Bellingham is the home of Faith Life which is the new name for the software Logos Bible software.

12:27 April 16 to 18, we’ll be in Dallas for the Outcomes Conference, which is hosted and sponsored and organized by Christian Leadership Alliance and they love to share best practices about the business of doing ministry and Christian nonprofits.

16:34 We are not done yet. We are continuing to March for toward the end of spring May. Where’s that? The middle of spring. End of spring. May. I’m excited because we’re going to go back to Dallas again. It’s kind of like a round trip for the Pushpay summit.